Land subsidence caused by the interaction of high-rise buildings in soft soil areas

Abstract

With the development of economy and the lack of land resource, many high-rise buildings have been constructed in big cities, which result in land subsidence in the soft soil areas, such as Shanghai and Tianjin in China. In this paper, the land subsidence caused by high-rise buildings was studied by centrifuge model tests and numerical simulations. The silty clay of layer No. 4 experiences the maximum subsidence. The central area of the building group has larger subsidence, and the subsidence superimposition effect is obvious. It can exceed the allowance and cause land subsidence hazard. Plastic deformation will occur in soil, causing the larger land subsidence when the load is large enough. The land subsidence caused by high-rise buildings with different distances was also studied. The building distance is smaller, the subsidence superimposition effect is more obvious, especially for the central area of buildings. It is feasible to increase the distance of buildings to prevent excessive land subsidence. The results from the 3D numerical simulations match well with those of the centrifuge model tests which can be used to analyze and predict the land subsidence of high-rise buildings.

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Acknowledgments

This work presented in this paper was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51208503), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province, China (Grant No. BK2012133) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2013QNA44).